Amputee
by BandGeek58407
Summary: A look into everyone's favorite FBI squad through the course of the two movies and in their own personal crisis. What's the family to do when Hendrix gets transferred? A tribute to the underappreciated agents! On hiatus.
1. Hendrix's Departure

**(As a note: this is a pet-project, and the poll winner will be written once my imagination takes down some rather annoying road blocks.) **

**I love the agents, and I thought they deserved their own fic. And just so you know, all the agents I mention were named in the movie, except for the agents I named (Rucker and Carlisle) and the one of my own invention (Lynch…anybody recognize him?). Maybe the first two were given names, but I didn't hear them. (sweatdrop) And I refer to a deleted scene from NT2, the long one outside Mt. Rushmore—it was SO much better than what was in the movie. If you haven't seen it, borrow somebody's second disc. To me, it's just as good as canon, and Turteltaub can get over it. (smiles)**

**Another note: exploring the internet tells me I was grossly wrong with some of these names! AGH! So...apparently Rucker is Johnson, Michaels is Colfax (since when? I'm so confused.), and Carlisle is Spellman. I will fix this eventually! Sorry!**

**Disclaimer: It's—gasp—not mine. **

_**Amputee**_

Of course there was more to be done, seeing as it was early morning and we worked in for the federal police department, but we still crowded into Agent Dawes' office, silent and idle. Mugs of half-stale coffee were gripped in some hands while file folders of important or classified documents laid forgotten at our feet. Like always, we took out same seats or positions, which meant more than one were empty.

"Where is everybody?" Agent Michaels finally inquired, leaning back a bit on his stool.

"Busy," Dawes sighed. "Like we should be."

We all agreed, but halfheartedly. How could we even begin to focus our minds once we heard the news? It was almost better, we implicitly decided, to ignore a case for an hour or so than to make blunders caused by distraction. And if this news didn't fall under that category, we didn't know what did.

"Lynch," Dawes continued. "Where did you hear this rumor?"

Agent Lynch, a young, scrawny redhead, was the newest addition to our squad, and he silently stammered some before answering. "I was, uh…in the bathroom and I overheard some executive agents talking about it. I swear it's not a rumor."

Bathroom gossip not a rumor?—we muttered to ourselves. It was a new concept, but the fact that Hendrix had yet to show up added a few points of credibility.

"What exactly did they say?" asked Agent Rucker as he ran a hand through his blond hair.

"I didn't catch all of it," Lynch admitted. "But it _sounded_ like—"

"You can't do much with 'sounded like' here, Lynch," Michaels said.

"It just sounded like Hendrix was getting promoted," the young agent finished hastily.

We tossed the idea around casually. Hendrix had been on the squad as long as any of us, except for maybe Rucker or Dawes. And he was the only one out of all of us who had been on both of the Gates cases.

"I think it makes sense," Lynch shrugged.

"Have you seen him in the field?" Dawes asked pointedly.

Again silence overtook us—we all stared at different corners of Dawes' office, Lynch batting absently at a desk trinket until her stare forced his hand back. Newbie, we think to ourselves. You don't touch another person's paraphernalia just because it looks entertaining.

"What do you think he got promoted to?" Michaels wondered aloud with a sigh.

"We don't even know if it's true," Dawes muttered.

"But I heard it—"

Cutting across Lynch, Michaels continued, "Yeah, but hypothetically. If he got promoted in the field, then he'd be on the same level as the boss, with his own squad."

Without a doubt, we all immediately agreed that was a scary prospect for the entire nation. No one in their right mind would give Hendrix that position, especially over Rucker, who had long ago been given the unofficial title of the boss' right-hand man.

"Do you suppose he was switched to intel?" Rucker suggested.

"More plausible," Dawes muttered, playing with the ornament Lynch had been preoccupied with. "Even if he didn't think to open a file for someone claiming the Declaration of Independence would be stolen."

"Yeah," Michaels said with a dismissive wave. "But all that worked out in the end, didn't it? Either way you work it, that same Howe guy would have gone to jail. No harm done."

"One of Howe's henchmen was killed in the process," Rucker said. "So yes, there _was_ harm done."

"Forgot about that."

Despite that, like Rucker pointed out, there was "harm done," we all came to the consensus it was so indirect that it could be disregarded. Wrong place at the wrong time, right? It very well could have been any of that group, so an accident it was. Hendrix didn't need the blame.

The door clicked open—in stepped a stressed Agent Carlisle, who had transferred to our unit a few months before the second Gates case. There wasn't a doubt in anyone's mind that besides Michaels, she was the closest to Hendrix.

"Hey," she said quickly. "Why is everyone in here? I just got all these new faxes on that new hacker case"—she motioned to the documents in her hand—"and I couldn't find anybody."

We've just been sitting in here for a few minutes, we told her. That seemed to ease her nerves a little to more normal levels, for her anyways.

"So what are you all doing again?" she asked.

We said Lynch heard Hendrix was getting promoted.

"And why did that warrant a gathering like this?" she asked again.

We were just discussing it, we insisted. Honest. After all, wasn't it a sort of random, slightly peculiar thing to happen to a sort of random, slightly peculiar person?

"He is _not_ peculiar," she said. "But yeah, I see your point. What's his new position?"

"That was something Lynch failed to get," Dawes supplied.

We watched as Carlisle ruminated silently on the subject. Over the three minutes or so that she sat in her usual plastic chair, the oh-so-important faxes found their way to the floor and mingled with those of the rest of us. "Jesus, where _would _they put him?" she finally wondered. "He didn't even know what OBE meant."

Quite immediately our eyebrows shot up in surprise. That was such a standard acronym; how could he have forgotten it?

"What does OBE stand for?" Lynch asked tentatively, mouth rightly turned into a grimace.

"Overtaken by events," Dawes and Carlisle said in unison.

"And he was running around Mount Rushmore with his baseball cap on backwards," Carlisle continued. "The boss said something about it being unprofessional…but he dropped it after a while, humored him, y'know?"

Yeah, we all agreed. That was really the only thing we could do with him sometimes. Sometimes—the word stuck in our thoughts. Half the time he really wasn't _that_ bad, was he? Of course not, no, not Hendrix; maybe Lynch, we thought to ourselves, but that's only because he's new. Not Hendrix.

"We had been thinking they were sending him to intel as a desk job," Michaels told Carlisle. "Though on second thought, intel doesn't have any open spots."

"They could make one," Dawes mumbled.

"I don't know why you all are being so negative about him; he handled himself fine in that second Gates case," Carlisle said, rolling her eyes. "Just because most of you were on that special case in Alaska during that time doesn't mean you can ignore it."

Most of us remembered him as an awkward rookie agent—Rucker gazed discreetly over at Lynch at this—who occasionally broke the main search computer.

"Yeah, but that only happened once," Michaels insisted. "At least to him. The _boss_ spilled coffee on it the second time." That earned a stifled snigger or two. It was a rare occasion when the boss was clumsy.

"He used it just fine in the Gates case," Carlisle said. "He found all the information on that Wilkinson guy, plus…we wouldn't have even been on the case if he hadn't found the newspaper article on Gates' ancestor."

Dawes and Rucker balked; since when had Hendrix become so efficient? Unable to really contribute to the conversation, Lynch sat back and tried every so often to interject a thought, but we just watched in muted pity. We all had to go through that phase—hell, some thought Hendrix went through relapses on a regular basis. How could he be getting _promoted_?

"Speaking of that," Carlisle sighed, running a hand through her dark hair. "I think one day he forgot the way to the boss' office."

Silence—for quite a long moment there was nothing we could think to say.

"How do you…" Rucker started, a look of confusion crossing his normally composed face. "…forget that?"

She shrugged, and we tensed, almost literally on the edge of our seat, to hear this tale. "I'm lost too. See, I was telling the boss about Hendrix's findings on Wilkinson and he was walking in front of us; all of a sudden he stopped, and I saw him try to open this door for a solid five seconds before he realized we were still moving."

We instantly agreed—that was kind of pathetic. Even Lynch knew where the boss' office was.

"Yeah, even I know…" The rookie stopped before he embarrassed himself further. "Well," he tried again. "The look on his face must have been priceless."

"Probably not unlike when he saw Gates leap off the Intrepid in New York," Michaels laughed.

We chuckled along with him, some more out of incredulity about the idea—Gates jumped off an aircraft carrier?

"You can't be serious," Lynch said, shaking his head.

"He is," Rucker muttered.

"Yeah, that case was full of crazy shit like that," Michaels laughed again, earning himself many perked eyebrows. "I'm sorry," he said. "But how _else_ would you describe it?"

Certainly not with a phrase like "crazy shit," but that's OK. Really. But we still scanned the room and saw that not everyone had the capacity to reminisce about said "crazy shit," like Carlisle and Lynch. They only stared at the rest of us with looks that shouted their indecision on whether they really wanted to be in the know. But didn't at least Carlisle know some from talking to Hendrix?

"He never really said much about the first one," she shrugged.

On second thought, "crazy shit" truly did seem like a fitting name, especially as we merely listed the course of events. Someone stole the Declaration of Independence; went immediately to his father's house and subsequently duct-taped him to a chair during Wheel of Fortune and stole his car; ran around, getting arrested in Philadelphia; escaped in New York by jumping off the USS Intrepid; and, last but certainly not least, found one of the world's largest, most valuable treasures.

It was definitely a break from the usual humdrum—high profile crimes could only get so creative, and Gates' entourage set new highs. What could be worse than stealing the Declaration?

"Kidnapping the president," Carlisle rattled off in a heartbeat.

"The man's a freaking maniac," Michaels muttered loudly.

"I second that," Dawes said.

"He's not a _maniac_," Rucker sighed. "He's just, well…y'know—"

"A _maniac_," Michaels completed.

"A smart one, too, and that makes him even more threatening," said Dawes.

"Hendrix did say Gates seemed like a very normal person, and _not_ a maniac. And isn't the boss somewhat a friend of his?" Carlisle asserted. "But I thought we were talking about this so-called promotion."

Oh, right. We all agreed that it was in the Bureau's best interest if they moved him to intel if they moved him at all. _If_—that was the big question. Wouldn't the boss know something about it? Turning to him was quickly shot down, for suddenly no one wanted the rumor to be confirmed. Who would we joke with when times became stressed and we needed a release, a dose of light in a profession of pressured toil? We all know we could laugh at Lynch, but it wouldn't be the same, and it would only last until he was no longer completely inept.

"They can't move Hendrix," Dawes said finally, and much to our surprise. "Any other unit wouldn't know what to do with him!"

"What do you mean?"

From how fast our necks whipped around, it was a miracle we didn't experience some form of whiplash. Hendrix stood in the doorway, briefcase in hand and looking more solemn than we've ever seen him. There was a hint of his determination that often took hold during the throes of a case, but something was a little off-kilter. Behind his calm façade, a shadow of dejection fell over his eyes. We thought to ourselves, could the rumors be true, then?

"What do you mean, Dawes?" he tried again; we tried to hide our tingeing cheeks.

"Are you…did your position get changed?" she asked tentatively.

His gaze swept around the room, falling on Carlisle the longest, before returning to her. We didn't like this, this new Hendrix. Honestly, he was acting too much like us. "Well, yeah, kind of…" he sighed.

"Like a promotion?" Lynch piped up—silently we snapped our fingers in disappointment, as it had looked for a moment as if Dawes was about to shoot a rubber band at him to prevent any of that unnecessary nonsense spewing from his mouth. Better luck next time.

"Not really," Hendrix sighed. "It's more like a transfer."

"To intel?" This time she was a little faster with her reflexes—not half a second went by after that comment did a sharp rubber-on-skin sound reverberate in the office. "Hey! What was that for, Dawes?"

"My hand slipped," she said innocently but in a way that implied, "you better shut the hell up." We had discovered that when you've been an agent for as long as she and Rucker have, you can say one thing and mean something else completely unrelated. Once we witnessed Rucker say, "My, those are some lovely begonias" and get across the message of "The files are in the desk drawer upstairs." To this day, we didn't know how he did it, but he did, honest to God.

"Where'd you get transferred to?" Carlisle asked with the trepidation seeping from our brows like sweat. So it was true? Hendrix was, in fact, leaving us?

"Homeland Security," he mumbled, shuffling his feet.

Harsh—it was the first thing off any of our lips. Those were mainly desk jobs over there, a bore to someone who had worked with the Gates cases, someone with quirks like Hendrix.

"That makes no sense," Michaels said sadly, shaking his head. "You're trained in the field—it's wasting you, sending you over there."

And technically, they're not even a police force, we said. They're a cabinet position for crying out loud. And really, who's going to induce more fear in a criminal: an agent from the FBI or an official from the Department of Homeland Security? We all agreed that the Bureau agent would have the guy in custody before the other would have enough time to spit out all those syllables.

"Did they give you a reason?" Rucker asked carefully.

"No…"

As agents who had worked together for so long, his grief soon became our own. It was fine to add new siblings to the family, but no one had the right to kidnap them. People get arrested for that.

"I appreciate what you're saying," Hendrix said. "But there's nothing that can be done."

Appeal to the boss! He'll vouch for you on all the work you've done!

"Nobody's told him yet."

Nobody's told him yet?—the phrase drifted around Dawes' office like a buzzing wind, if wind could do such a thing.

"If it was infested with locusts," Lynch offered.

Anyway. We pestered Hendrix with questioning that left his already battered mood severely pockmarked. He hadn't told the boss? Had _anyone_?

He shook his head. "Could you guys pass along the message?"

No, we most certainly could _not_.

"Why not?"

"You're the one who's leaving, Hendrix," Rucker stated calmly. "Being roundabout never helps anything in the field…or in life." Leave it to Rucker to make a nice sentimental-ish metaphor. Around the office, he did that a lot, at classic Hallmark moments. It was so annoyingly frequent that occasionally we caught ourselves checking our rears for a copyrighted golden crown.

"I know," Hendrix sighed. "I just—and I know this sounds really weird…I just didn't want to see his reaction."

The thought struck an off-key, out-of-tune chord with us. To the boss, everyone had a different function and purpose, for lack of some better terms. Dawes was straightforward, observant, catching details that flew under most radars. Rucker was, as we had already determined, the boss' right-hand man and was in a way the squad's vice-president. On the other hand, Michaels was a constant who did a fair to above-average job on a regular basis. Then there was Lynch—the boss was there to save the rookie from himself. But Hendrix was different, and we all recognized and accepted it. Whenever he spoke to Hendrix, whether it was a reprimanding or otherwise, the boss took on more of an air of a benevolent uncle—to a degree.

It was weird.

But with that in mind, not one of us wanted to be the one to tell him. It would be snappy and sour moods for a long time, we bet wordlessly.

"Do you…do you have to leave right _now_?" Carlisle asked quietly, a description that was usually used on her with the word "not" in there somewhere.

"I think it'd be best before the boss showed up," he replied. On any other day, the boss would have already berated us ten times over for wasting time. But it was the second Thursday of the month, which meant it was Free Bagels from the Boss Day. He was always a little late on Bagel Day.

"Don't you want your bagel?" Lynch asked.

Hendrix smiled grimly. "That's OK." If that question had been asked of any of us, we wouldn't have handled it nearly that peacefully.

"But the boss always gets you that strange cinnamon walnut butter pecan thing you like," Michaels piped up. "Pre-toasted," he added.

"It's fine, really. I'll pick one up later."

"But those things are expensive," Rucker said. "The boss is probably buying it this very minute, and no one else but you will eat it. It'll just go to waste."

It was bizarre how suddenly something as mundane as a bagel could seem so life-alteringly important. Why couldn't the guy wait long enough to eat the damn thing, really?

"Come on, Hendrix, just stay. Why would you not want to say good bye?" The words had popped out of Dawes' mouth and surprised her just as much as the rest of us. Hanging in the silence, they spoke what had been flowing through our brains since he got the silly idea.

"I know, I know, but…" he sighed in his usual fashion, mouth scrunched up in a flat, nervous frown. "I just can't. It's complicated, and…well, you see…" Oh great. He was floundering again. "The thing is…I just can't. I'm sorry…" With a last glance at all of us and especially one strangely-silent Carlisle, he swiveled around haphazardly, laden with the emotion we were all feeling, and walked straight into Dawes' office door with a thunk.

None of us said a word—he simply paused, checked the status of his nose and forehead, and in take two opened the door, making it out successfully. The silence was kept for another good ten seconds before Dawes pierced it with a depressed sigh.

"Oh my god," she moaned. "What a fitting exit."

"Are you…OK, Carlisle?" Lynch asked softly.

From what we could tell, she didn't look OK—in fact, she looked quite the opposite. Eyes staring at nothing but aimed at the carpeted floor, he right hand stuck in mid-motion running through her hair.

"Carlisle?" Dawes tried.

"He can't leave!" she exclaimed abruptly.

"He kind of already did," Rucker said, pointing toward the door.

"No, no, no…" she sighed frantically. "Do you think he's left the building?" Without even waiting for a response, she leapt up and flung open the door, dashing madly out. Something was up.

"What did they put in the coffee today?"

We all looked up and found a frazzled boss in the doorway, one arm hugged around a crinkled paper bag. In wafted the lingering toasted scent of cinnamon walnut butter pecan.

"What do you mean?" Lynch asked all too innocently after an awkward pause.

"Well…" the boss sighed as he set the bag down on the corner of Dawes' desk. "I passed Agent Hendrix on the way in by the front entrance and he barely said hello, and you saw Agent Carlisle almost trample me."

He waited expectantly, hand half in the bagel bag and eyes surveying over us like a searchlight. He knew that we knew. We knew that he knew that we knew. And he was acutely aware of that as well. But we clearly did not want to say a word. So instead we were given our bagels, some accompanied by mini to-go cartons of butter and an ineffective plastic knife.

"Why do you think Carlisle was so…?" Rucker said to Dawes, waving his hands on either side of his face as replacement for an elusive adjective.

With our specially-trained ears, we honed in on their conversation, but there was none, only more silence as Dawes contemplated his inquiry. Suddenly her index finger flew up in a revelation, and she stood with a small grin. "Michaels, your office looks out over the sidewalk by the front, right?"

"Yeah…?"

She briskly walked out, the rest of us following close in her wake, the boss at the tail.

We arrived at his cluttered office and made for the two windows at the back wall, fighting for a view. OK, Dawes, what were we supposed to be looking at?

"Right there," she said with a point.

If it had been a cartoon, our mouths would have stretched to the ground. To put it bluntly, Hendrix and Carlisle were making out.

Smiling in a way we thought was most unusual for her, Dawes relinquished her spot and gave it to the boss, who squinted around blindly for a second without his glasses. Once he focused in on the sight, his eyes bulged.

"Would someone please explain to me why two of my agents are engaging in this extreme act of PDA on the streets of Washington?" he finally managed to choke out, gazing to Rucker on his right.

"No, see, sir," Michaels said on his other side. "That's not extreme. If it was extreme, then they'd be—"

"Thank you, Agent Michaels," the boss said curtly before he turned back to Rucker.

"Well, uh…" he started. Despite being Mr. Greeting Card, Rucker was known to be extremely uncomfortable when witnessing romantic encounters. We all knew he had a soft spot for Dawes—except her, of course. Maybe that had something to do with it. "Technically, sir…there's only one of your agents down there."

And leave it to Rucker to take the hit.

"What do you mean, Agent Rucker?" the boss said quickly.

"Hendrix got transferred to Homeland security this morning, sir," Michaels said quietly.

The spectacle on the streets was forgotten as we all eyed the boss carefully—he leaned back from the window, unreadable, and lightly brought his fingertips to his temple. From our experience, he was a very unpredictable man, and therefore none of us knew how close or far away we should have been—would he explode, or would he not? To explode or not to explode: Hamlet had nothing on us.

"Why didn't anybody tell me about this?" he said. We exchanged blank glances.

"Sir, we only found out ourselves a few minutes ago," Dawes said along the opposite wall of the office.

"I know that, Agent Dawes," he continued. "I was talking about my superiors." Briskly he walked out of the room and back into Dawes' office where the bagel bag sat abandoned. Not knowing what else to do, we followed him, and sinking feelings pervaded our systems. The boss' sight fell upon our classified documents that had been scattered about, and our sinking feelings fully capsized in a dramatic, Titanic-like manner. Leonardo DiCaprio was filming a death scene somewhere.

"Um, what is this?" he asked in that quiet, somewhat dangerous tone of his. He rarely yelled—we would have almost preferred that to this.

Thankfully Rucker stepped forward again. "Agent Carlisle came to us with some new files on that hacker—"

"And instead you all sat here swapping gossip?" The boss' gaze swept over each of us in turn, and we felt a tinge of pink rise to our cheeks. "While you were sitting here, the guy could've hacked into Asia and drained Japan of yen for Christ's sake!"

Catching Rucker's eye, Dawes mouthed discretely, "Hacked into Asia?" We, too, weren't aware that continents had CPUs, but we kept that to ourselves.

"Yes, Agent Dawes," the boss continued, much to her embarrassment. "Hack into Asia. Get to work. _Now_." And at that, he turned on his heel and escaped to the confines of his own office, though these types of "confines" weren't at all private. Most of our offices' walls were glass, equipped with blinds. The boss' was just down the hall, and we all silently watched as he fell into his cushioned chair and slammed his fist on the table, face twisted in frustration and a thousand other things.

"Can we still have our bagels?" Lynch asked carefully after a moment.

"Sure, Lynch, here," Michaels sighed, handing him the bread along with some papers. "Just take it back to your office, all right?"

One by one, we came to the same consensus, but we succeeded in dragging our feet. It was long enough for Carlisle to come breathlessly running back to join us—needless to say, she was met with our knowing but fleeting smirks.

"What?" she said suspiciously.

We advised her to avoid the boss for a while and to say good-byes in more private locations.

"Uh…OK. Why?" Hopefully she was inquiring about the former.

"We told him about Hendrix," Lynch said.

Nodding, we all quickly departed, as Michaels had spotted the boss inspecting us curiously from one of his many windows. With bagels in hand and work to be done, we hoped to block the slew of thoughts until after Japan's almost-crisis of yen drainage was resolved, though this strategy was not working all that well. Many a time when we hit a wall, we would be halfway out of our seats, aching for a relieving laugh, when we'd remember Hendrix's office was collecting dust.

Later, Michaels told us he had watched Hendrix down on the sidewalk after he had returned to his desk. It was odd to think that Hendrix stayed down there so long after Carlisle left, and more so to think that Michaels would watch. We kept our accusations of being a stalker at bay. But according to his story, our fallen agent had stared up at the J. Edgar Hoover Building for a good five minutes, had paced about, and had stared some more before finally stepping across the street and calling a cab. It had been nine-oh-eight in the morning, and eerily enough we all agreed we had felt a depressing pall fog up our windows at approximately that moment.

XXX

**Did you like it? I hope so. The POV was a sort of experimentation—the first person collective. I recently read a book like that and thought this was a good instance to try it out. (shrugs)**

**Please review—I want to continue this (it's idea city in my head right now) and I'd like to hear your thoughts, as I usually do. (smiles) It'll push me to stop being lazy about chapter 2. **


	2. Flashback: The Archives Call

**Hey! Look who's finally updated! (waves) Terribly sorry. But I have free time again, which is super fun. Huzzah! For waiting so long, you get a really long chapter. **

**This story alternates by chapter between present day and flashbacks. So seeing as chapter 1 was a present day, this is a flashback. Woo.**

**Disclaimer: This would only be mine in an alternate universe in which my name is the late Walt Disney. And frankly, that would be too weird even for me. **

**_Chapter 2 – Flashback: The Archives Calls_**

It had been an insidiously boring day.

For most of it, we had been forced to work on one of the most cliché crimes of all time by one of the most cliché criminals of all time. It was a bank robbery, where the robber's face was covered by a ski mask, he made a loud, dramatic getaway and then immediately went to his mother's house. Oddly enough, we had seen it so many times, groans of "not _again_" mingled in our throats; however, those were quickly eradicated upon our discovery that the criminal's mother was a skilled robber as well.

"Well that's just perfect!" Hendrix sighed. "Now the guy's got help. How fair is that?"

While Hendrix grumbled and complained, the rest of us got down to business—one, at least for a moment, hummed a chorus or two of the applicable Mulan song to help keep morale up. Rucker soon gave it up after Dawes shot him a bewildered look that screamed, "OK, what the hell? We're not in a Disney movie." Her nimble fingers sifted through a pile of yellowing newspapers.

"The search computer's on the fritz," she muttered, clearly implying a question of why. We glanced at Hendrix briefly, who had a very empty mug of coffee before him which, until recently, had been very full. "Anybody know _anything_ about this guy's mother? I hate searching by hand."

We told her everything we knew, which took no time at all considering we knew absolutely nothing. Instead our gazes fell to the conference room's window with a spectacular view of the sky—it was inky black, dotted by the occasional airplane and featuring a full moon that lit the sidewalks where the streetlights could not reach. We wanted to be out there so badly that it hurt, but the boss had told us hours ago that our squad had been mandated to stay until we managed to produce some useful information.

Anybody up for a sleepover?

"I am _not_ spending the night here," Michaels stated, leaning back in his chair. "Sleeping here one night, I guarantee, will cost thousands in chiropractic care down the road. These seats just _suck_."

"They're not…_bad_," Rucker sighed. "Just a bit stiff, is all." We often wondered what would pop out of Rucker's mouth if one of us dropped a hammer on his foot; it would probably be something quite unsatisfying, like "phooey." On the other hand, we all knew what _we_ would say—same beginning sound of "phooey," different ending, the word whose existence Rucker liked to deny.

"So…what are we supposed to be looking for?" Hendrix said.

We stared. Dawes handed him a couple dollars. "Go make yourself useful and buy a stash of Snickers, OK?"

As soon as the door clicked behind him, we remarked how she was lactose intolerant, Rucker was allergic to nuts, and Michaels had an aversion to delicious, fluffy nougat. She simply rolled her eyes.

"Exactly. Haven't you ever heard of buying time? He'll have to go back and get something else."

Unless, we suggested, he wants Rucker to have a near-fatal allergy attack like he had at the Christmas party last year.

"Can we please not bring that up?" Rucker said quickly.

But Hendrix _was_ the one who later commented how Smurf-like you had become.

"Seriously, guys," he sighed, ruffling his papers suggestively. "Stop."

OK, fine. We returned to our skimming—excuse us, _reading_—but occasionally had to stifle a chuckle: bringing up Rucker and a Smurf in the same sentence conjured up many an entertaining mental image. Later Michaels told us his included the boss dressed up as Papa Smurf playing whack-a-mole, the last detail confusing us quite a bit. Why whack-a-mole?

"I like whack-a-mole," he said.

Anyway. After a while, we noted that Hendrix had been gone a long time. How long does it take for someone to buy four candy bars? The machine must have eaten him.

"Please don't get my hopes up," Dawes muttered.

"You know the machines here, though," Michaels said. "They have to be _the_ most finicky things in Washington. Demonic, more like it—"

Yes, Michaels. We all know how its LCD screen _supposedly_ taunted you for picking the wild berry over the regular Skittles. Heard the story a thousand times. Hired an exorcist, even.

"You never told me that," he said.

We're kidding.

"Oh."

And then, without warning, Hendrix was suddenly sprawled over the conference table, papers flying into the air like confetti and Dawes' face twitching up a storm. The door behind us was still shivering from the force that had been used to shove it open.

"Yes, Hendrix?" Rucker said pleasantly as the younger agent collected himself.

"The boss—no Snickers—all upset—big deal…" he panted, having obviously run here.

"OK, OK, calm down," Dawes said. "What is going on?"

Picking a green Post-It out of his solid block of hair, he took a few deep breaths and smoothed the creases out of his suit that had bunched up in his crash landing. "All right…" he sighed, still very fidgety. "I was at the snack machine by the boss' office, since, y'know, the one down the hall is full of tofu and vitamin B-twenty-four, and the one where I was is huge and I couldn't find the Snickers—"

God, Hendrix, get to the point.

"Right, right. The boss got a phone call and we have a case to respond to, 'cause we're the only people here."

A case? Our interest was immediately perked. About what?

"That's the thing."

OK, you could _not _be more vague.

"He wanted to be the one to tell you—it's a big deal. Like big, big, big, _big_."

"That's a lot of bigs," Rucker said.

"Understandably so! Y'know," he sighed. "Once you hear what's gone down."

Instantly thoughts of the family of robbers drifted into our mental bin that was labeled "unimportant drivel"—it was getting to be quite full, fuller by the second. Hendrix's nervous mutterings as we dashed (he dashed; we barely kept up) to the boss' office were becoming less coherent, diving right into that overflowing bin. We were sure he began to mention the Declaration of Independence. How incoherent can you get?

"—and the Declaration…" he kept murmuring.

"Hush," Rucker said, putting a hand on his shoulder. "You're not making any sense, all right?" The two locked eyes, Rucker raising his eyebrows after a moment. "It's just another case, probably nothing out of the ordinary. Hakuna matata!"

Despite our clearly embarrassed expressions behind them, this seemed to force some normalcy into Hendrix's breathing. Rucker fell back next to Dawes, who rightly shot him another "what the hell was that?" look. Really, Rucker, we murmured to him. You're thirty years old. Cut the Disney.

"I was just trying to help!" he hissed under his breath. Dawes simply smiled in a way that urged him to find new methods, and fast. We couldn't have agreed more.

"Dude, can't you give us a clue?" Michaels sighed. "We can act surprised when the boss tells us so you won't get chastised." We knew there were some flaws with that idea. One: Hendrix is never chastised in the normal sense of the word, and two: Dawes can't act.

"Can too," she muttered.

"You always overdo your reactions, though," Hendrix sighed, desperate to switch the subject but clearly unsure how to do so. "He'll see right through it and kill me with one of his duck decoys!"

Yeah, we had to admit that being bludgeoned to death with a wooden water fowl would pretty much suck. Sorry, Michaels—your plan's down the drain.

While we not-so-consolingly consoled him over the tragic death of his scheme, Hendrix continued to look antsy. "Guys?" he finally said as we rounded the corner. "You don't think the boss would really hit me with one of those things?"

"Don't think I would _what?_"

Taken off guard, we nearly flew out of our shoes. The boss had a strange habit and ability of popping up at the most timely yet inconvenient occasions in a conversation. After much discussion, we had concluded that he was either a ninja, had been a ninja in a past life, or was watching Naruto reruns late into the night like they were a how-to manual. None seemed likely.

"Not important, sir," Rucker said quickly. "Hendrix said something about an important case…?"

The boss pushed past us like a giant running through a toddler's game of red rover, his cell phone ringing. "Sadusky," he muttered. "We're on our way, sir." There was a pause. "Three minutes, tops. All right? I know." He hung up, and we waited with baited breath. "I know you aren't deaf. We have to be at the National Archives in two minutes and fifty-seven seconds."

Hurrying after him, all we could do was call out confused inquiries jarred by our feet's quickening pace. Why the Archives?

"The Declaration of Independence has been stolen."

Damn.

The news smacked us in the face so hard that we were forced to a standstill, only Hendrix keeping on. Nothing was becoming clear, except Hendrix for once. Even still, after this case sank in and the boss snapped at us for "dilly-dallying" (as he put it), it was still difficult to fathom that our rookie had been making sense.

"You know," he said, frowning, as we climbed into the police car. "It's been known to happen."

With Rucker and the boss in the front and Hendrix squeezed between Dawes and Michaels in the back, things were mighty uncomfortable. As soon as the boss flicked on the sirens and slammed on the gas, Rucker covered his eyes and went to his happy place, and understandably so. The boss drove like a psychopath—it was remarkable that he hadn't killed anybody.

Yet.

But the back seat we all knew was the worst. Nobody liked being sardined like that, especially when one of the parties involved has been offended and hurt. Guilt shoving butcher knives into our stomach, we all sneaked brief glances at Hendrix but failed to come up with something to say. So he was new and adjusting to the Bureau, which takes a lengthy amount of time. Our jibing wasn't making things easier, right when these things were about to get a lot harder.

"Hey—" Dawes started, cut off by one of the boss' screaming turns. "Hendrix, uh…did you get the, er…" What she was planning we had no clue, but our confusion was masked by our shock that she, for once, was not articulate.

"The Snickers? Yeah," he said, pulling one from his coat. "Being hungry tonight would not be ideal." An unsure, halfway-grim smile flashed across his face.

"Thanks, Hendrix," she said with a clap on his shoulder, and at once she began to unwrap the thing in all its milk-product goodness. What the hell was she thinking? Tonight, we could be facing the biggest case of our lives, and she was over there munching on a stick of intestinal dynamite.

While Hendrix leaned back on the headrest and shut his eyes for a moment of elusive peace, the rest of us sat waiting for an epiphany in regards to Dawes' reasoning. Finally Michaels got tired of sitting around.

"Just what are you doing?" he mouthed across Hendrix, just as Dawes had put a chunk of the bar between her teeth. "This is _so_ counterproductive that it's not even funny!" At that, his hand came down in an emphatic motion, and right onto Hendrix's right kneecap.

The rookie flew to attention and gazed curiously over to Michaels, who feigned innocence while keeping an eye on Dawes' mouthed reply.

"I'm trying not to make him feel useless!" She, too, somehow managed to whack Hendrix on the shoulder, and his attention was diverted once more.

"He would've never known the difference," Michaels insisted silently behind the befuddled agent. "How are you going to help us on the case with an upset stomach?" And, as we should have guessed by now, the back of his hand made contact with the back of Hendrix's head. The process continued incessantly, as did their silent debate.

"I think he would have noticed the four candy bars in his jacket!" Smack.

"You're overanalyzing!" Whack.

"You're _under_analyzing! And aren't _you_ supposed to be his best work friend?" Slap.

Suddenly they both found their foreheads smacked and pushed back, so their skulls were against the windows. "And Hendrix retaliates on the unofficial 'Let's Hit Hendrix Day'!" he declared triumphantly with a huge grin. We were shocked, but there was still a resistible urge to chuckle. Rucker even peeked through his web of fingers to arch an eyebrow at us via the rearview mirror.

"What are you doing back there?" the boss snapped, thankfully not taking his eyes off the road and thereby committing a manslaughter. Still, we in the back sobered up immediately and muttered "nothing" under our breaths.

We all oddly felt that we were ten years old again, going on a road trip with an irate, road-raging father. All that was missing was…

Hands back covering his face, Rucker said, "Are we there yet?"

Yeah, we were officially ten again, but our relived childhood was cut short with the squealing brakes and onslaught of inertia. Hendrix even made some choking sound because of the seat belt over his neck.

"Get out of the car," the boss mumbled.

Although we occasionally enjoyed the wasting of time, we made every effort to almost teleport out to soothe the boss' nerves. It was apparent, though, that we weren't his brand of aloe.

"Listen," he said to our circle as more police swarmed the impressive Archives steps. "I know you're not stupid, but I can't emphasize enough: this is huge, life-altering, the difference between employed and unemployed should something go wrong." Letting that last point sink in, he gazed at each of us significantly. "There hasn't been a case so far in any of your careers where your country has been counting this much on you. Don't let it down."

He turned and started up the steps, met halfway by an Archives official, a larger black man with silver hair whose hands were cemented on a walkie-talkie. Being the intelligent agents we were, we took this as our cue to follow. All the while we leaped up the grand steps, the boss was fifteen steps ahead, physically and mentally. Who knew what thoughts were flying through his brain as he conferred with this security advisor; as he caught wind of the confused mutterings wafting from inside; as he realized he had to depend on _us_? Sometimes we wished huge events like this could come with a twenty-four hour notice, just so we could get in the right state of mind.

"How'd we go from Smurfs to this?" Dawes muttered, much to our amusement, but Hendrix's bemusement, as he had been on his Snickers run.

Upon entering the building and falling into ranks with our fellow law enforcers, we instantly felt like party crashers. All the gala guests, in their formal garb, were milling about, staring expectantly up at the boss.

"So…what?" Michaels breathed to us. "You dress in uncomfortable clothes, eat funny food, listen to stuffy music, and examine old documents? Geez, look at all the fun we've been missing."

Not trying to hide a smile, Rucker shot him a look with a roll of his eyes to shut him up. Not that we didn't share his sentiments—what a bunch of _stiffs_. One, still clutching a tall glass half full of champagne, stood anxiously by our group.

"Good evening, ladies and gentlemen," the boss said to the crowd. "My name is Peter Sadusky: I'm the agent in charge."

Wait—he has a _first_ name? And it's _Peter_? What the hell…we would _so_ not peg him for a Peter. And it was at that point we realized we didn't know anyone else's first names, either.

"I want to reassure you that you are not in danger in any way," he continued. "And if we all cooperate, we can get through this with as little frustration as possible. Thank you."

Even though he wasn't looking at us when he said that, we knew that it was us he was alluding to. A smidgen of guilt passed over us, and Hendrix visibly fidgeted and twitched, shifting his weight from foot to foot until Dawes put a forceful hand on his shoulder. But it didn't really help all that much; as the boss and the top stiff turned from the gala guests, we began to wonder if he would actually skitter away.

"Get positive IDs and search everyone, including the security staff," the boss said in a lower tone; we flocked close to his side immediately and were afraid to move an inch too far away and thereby miss our orders. Screwing something up by going solo for even a second was not worth the risk. Who knew?—maybe the boss kept those decoys on his person for times like these. What an embarrassing story to tell…how'd we get these bruises, you ask? Flying, psychotic, wooden _ducks_!

"If they refuse," he continued. "Detain them and get warrants." Well, we thought to ourselves. That sounds like fun.

Our trains of thought were interrupted as Hendrix cleared his throat in a very uncomfortable manner. Instantly we knew that whatever he felt the need to say would not be worth celebrating—we could tell these things.

"Yes, Agent Hendrix? You have something?" the boss said with an edge of impatience.

"Um…" We could almost feel his planned words evaporate under the boss' expectant gaze, our eyes soon joining his. Of course, this wasn't making the rookie's ordeal any better.

"This isn't a day for 'um's."

Sighing, he allowed another brief pause to ensue. "We got a tip several days ago that someone was going to steal the Declaration of Independence."

Whoa, whoa, whoa—_we_? _We _don't remember anything of the sort. We're pretty sure _we_ were out at Subway for lunch that day when _you_ came in late after that migraine. _You_ must have gotten that tip. Don't bring any of this "_we_" business in here!

"Name on the tipster?"

Maybe Hendrix could redeem himself…maybe, hopefully, _please_—

"There was no file opened—"

What?

"—we didn't find the information credible."

You mean _you_ didn't find the information credible, you dunce! What the _hell_! For a moment, we considered that perhaps a bit of pity was due for him after a brief glance at the boss, but our sheer incredulity overpowered everything. We wondered if Dawes had saved that Snickers—it'd make a wonderful, less-lethal-than-a-duck-decoy projectile.

But much to our surprise, the boss only sighed and spoke with a most uncharacteristic, obvious sarcasm. "How about now?"

"Yes, sir," Hendrix said quietly, his gaze on the tiled floor. "I'll keep this in mind in the future."

Many of us doubted the usefulness of such a reassurance after this slip-up of his. But he still owned up to it. That was something, wasn't it? Maybe he didn't have to be let go, but on second thought… We silently debated back and forth, as regular as a giant, humanoid pendulum.

"Agent Hendrix," the boss said after a moment's pause. This was it—if he was getting the sack, the boss wouldn't beat around the bush anymore. "I believe there is another exit to this building along the back, by the souvenirs. Would you mind running some checks back there?"

He heartily agreed and dashed off down the grand stair case, disappearing before we barely had time to register what was going on, and most definitely before he had been able to decrypt the request. Most likely this was the precursor to the ever-feared sack, a way to comb him out of our hair for the time being. The only one of us who didn't look back at him as he departed was Dawes.

"Now," the boss kept on. "Some of the security staff said they found some unusual items in the hallways below." Without a word to Dr. Herbert, he strode off to the same staircase that Hendrix had just used, only taking a different direction. We remained in our spots, trying to remove the metaphorical glue from our soles.

"Excuse me," the stiff said to us suddenly. "Have any of you seen Dr. Abigail Chase? She was just here a few minutes ago."

Like we had any idea who _that_ was. But we—_politely_—told him that we had absolutely no freaking clue what he was talking about, and he proceeded to scurry back to his circle of stiff friends rather awkwardly. His question, however misdirected, stuck with us for some reason—it looked as if Dawes was filing it away for future use, since she did that a lot with random tidbits of information, like the prices of jumbo packs of her favorite ball-point pen.

"Maybe we should, um…" Rucker said with a jerk of the head to the stairs.

"Remember," she replied curtly, already halfway there. "This isn't a day for 'um's."

"He's not going to appreciate you quoting him like that," Michaels said as he jogged after them. "You might find yourself in the gift shop next to Hendrix."

"Heaven forbid," she muttered.

Following the sounds of confused murmurs issuing up from the bottom of the staircase, we soon found ourselves in an ornate hallway flooded with our comrades. The boss sidestepped all of them as he took in little details silently. Could the criminals, who must have gotten past the oodles of security, really have been as careless as to leave evidence strewn all over the hallway?

"Apparently," Rucker sighed. "But don't complain. We haven't had a somewhat idiot criminal in a while."

"If they stole the Declaration," Dawes muttered. "then they aren't idiots." As soon as her last syllable escaped her mouth, a light tinkling came from her shoe, and she bent down. "Hm…" When she came back up, a brass-colored cylinder was pressed between her thumb and first finger carefully. "Aha," she said with a smile, gazing back toward the floor. Upon a second examination, five more similar objects laid in her palm. She turned to Michaels. "Do you have a Ziploc bag?"

"Yes," Michaels sighed sarcastically. "Because I keep a box of those in my suit pocket just for occasions like these. No, of course I don't have any!"

"Just wondering…" Rolling her eyes, she began to inspect the cylinders in more detail and proceeded to ignore us as she walked down toward the far right end of the corridor.

After she was out of earshot, Michaels muttered to Rucker, "Do I seem like the kind of guy to have an emergency stash of those bags? Seriously?"

Rucker simply shrugged and avoided committing either way. "Hey…" he sighed, swiveling his companion around to the other end of the hall, where some lower-level police were regarding a large, metal case with too much curiosity to be safe. "Go over there and take control before those guys break something." It had been known to happen—in the serial bank robbery case a few years back, they completely obliterated a vase with the suspect's fingerprints on it and thereby lost the case.

"It'd be amazing if they broke _that_," Michaels mumbled with a subtle jerk of the head at the box. Still, he wasted no time in going over and shooing away the flies that were those ignorant non-FBI officers. Didn't they have better things to do than ogle? Ooo, a giant glass case! How incredibly _common_ in this particular building!

While Rucker ran off to make sure nothing else could be unintentionally harmed, Michaels seemed to have taken to filling the officers' ogling position. From what we could tell a good distance away, he looked rather unproductive just staring at it, stroking his chin and so forth. Watch out for that duck decoy! But we really didn't say that, so his little reaction-twitch appeared unnecessary—unless he found something…

Nah.

Meanwhile, the boss had circled back around, Dr. Stiff—er, Herbert—and the security official that he met up with when we first arrived here close around him. While they meandered around the others lining the corridor, he kept his gaze, determined and grave, straight ahead, only turning to the official and Dr. Herbert when necessary. "There's a copy of the Declaration on display now?"

"Ye—" Dr. Herbert started.

"Leave it." Ha. He couldn't even get a whole syllable out, the stiff (none of us had any idea just why that was such a fun moniker to assign him). "The guests know something happened, but they don't know what."

By then, Dawes had caught up with him after having apparently spoken with the medics by an ailing security guard. By now she was all-business and all-scary. Bother her now and you just might find yourself having emergency nose repair surgery within twenty-four hours.

"They got him with a taser at the service entrance," she informed him, motioning to the groaning man. "He doesn't remember a thing."

Wow, the rest of us instantly thought to ourselves. Tasers can do that? We recalled the last time the Bureau tried out issuing apparently low-powered tasers for us to use in the field. Of course, they had the incredible foresight to do this right after a new, highly-caffeinated coffee machine was put in the break room; within ten minutes of the boss' leaving us alone, a taser-tag fight erupted, teams somehow splitting along gender lines.

Poor Dawes wouldn't come out of the bathroom for three hours.

And when she finally surrendered, Hendrix shocked her in her writing arm, rendering it—and thereby her—useless for a good portion of the day. To think sometimes we actually wondered why she had some inklings of hostility toward the guy!

"Also, we found bullet casings," she continued as she held up a Ziploc bag. Where the heck did she get that? Did they have baggie dispensers by the water fountains or something? Man, this place _was_ weird.

As soon as she completed her sentence, the four of them had made it back over to where Michaels was holding vigil, but we could see that they were quite intent on finishing their briefing. "Did we get a description from the other guards?" the boss asked with a look at the official.

The man fought back a grimace and shifted his gaze. "Which guards?" he countered.

"The guards that—" Somehow the boss managed to trail off into complete gibberish for which we had not compiled a mental dictionary yet. But we kept silent, since apparently the man understood him, and that was all that mattered, really. It didn't change the fact that we _really_ wanted to know, being insatiably curious and all.

Again, the man becomes another level of nervous. "There weren't any other guards on patrol down here."

The boss didn't even bother to reply to that, and we didn't blame him. We mean, if you don't have guards guarding what needs to be guarded, then you can't blame anybody but yourself when it gets stolen—case in point. Turning back to face Michaels, he raised his eyebrows with much exaggeration, but all funny expressions we lost once we all eyed the case.

As our eyes took in what was indeed something and our minds grappled to pluck out the right words, we slowly realized that no words were necessary. Crunched circles of glass resembling hailstones dotted the gleaming surface with web-like tendrils lining their edges.

Someone must have gotten very angry at the document.

"Who was shooting, who were they shooting at…?" the boss asked aloud. Agents in other squads found this practice of his irritating. We, on the other hand, loved it. It was like an oral school worksheet with everything laid out perfectly. This way we didn't operate like a giant chicken with its head cut off, like _some_ other squads around the Bureau. "And why weren't they getting along?"

"'Cause they were trying to steal the Declaration of Independence!"

With all of our focus aimed specifically at the evidence, we didn't have enough reaction time to berate Hendrix for answering a rhetorical question. Clearly he didn't pay enough attention in English class, but for the record, neither did we…except for Rucker, maybe. He seemed like the type.

"I _thought_"—despite the obvious emphasis, Hendrix remained unfazed—"I told you to run checks in the gift shop." The boss' mustache twitched ever so slightly, and we had to fight the urge to duck and cover.

"I did," he replied with a misplaced grin. The goofy thing stayed on his face much longer than we ourselves would have deemed safe.

Instead of saying anything, the boss simply raised his eyebrows. Deep within our Boss-Sensors, we knew that if any words were going to come out of his mouth, they would not be very nice.

"I found something," Hendrix elaborated. "And if you don't believe me," he appropriately added. "come talk to the clerk herself."

Oh boy, here we go again. With a quite obvious look down at the pockmarked case, the boss arched his eyebrows even higher, so high in fact that we thought they would mesh with his hairline. And even more obviously, he turned his head to give a long stare at the tasered guard. Only then did he return his glance to Hendrix. "Could you summarize it? We're a bit busy down here."

"You're going to want to come see for yourself, sir," he said quickly. "And there are some videos that aren't nearly as effective if I just describe them to you."

We could see that this was _not_ heading in a good direction; for one, Hendrix used the phrase "you're going to want to," which the boss detested with every fiber of his being. And secondly, the rookie was already in such deep metaphorical doo-doo that it almost had a non-metaphorical stench.

"Well, Hendrix," Rucker said suddenly. "Let's put it this way: if this were an e-mail, what would the subject line be?"

It didn't take long for him to answer. "Possible suspect."

"Damn, Hendrix," Dawes exclaimed. "And you were only up there for only _how_ long?" And she was supposed to be the one who was hard to read (as long as she wasn't lying). Not this time, we all thought.

"Agent Dawes, watch your language," the boss said with an air of forced calm. "And Hendrix—" Pausing to find the words in the mess of this case, he added, "Good job." The break in the sentence hardly allowed him the time to erase the clear confusion of the last bit. At any rate, we ran back up the stairs, two at a time (Michaels knew from experience that three at a time was not worth the medical bills) until we found ourselves facing a young, befuddled cashier in the gift shop.

"Um…hello," she said carefully.

"Were you the one who talked to Agent Hendrix?" the boss asked, and she nodded. "So what's this I hear about a suspect?"

As soon as the words were out of his mouth, that same official from before arrived in the small room. "Excuse me, Agent Sadusky," he stated. "But we need Tanya here to come down to the security area with all the other employees. You're free to use the monitor room down that hallway." Motioning to said hallway, he promptly left, and Tanya followed close behind.

"Sorry," she mouthed over her shoulder. The boss sighed with frustration.

"OK, then, let's see this footage, Hendrix." The walk to the monitor room was mercifully short, for we were soon hating this tension of the case and Hendrix's possible loss of employment. Let's just get it over with. Oh wait. That would be too easy.

This room was even more cramped than the souvenir shop with all of us crammed in it. Hell, even two fairly large guards would get inklings of claustrophobia in here. The daunting atmosphere was not helped by the wall of square screens in front of us, all showing the same image. It was like an extremely cheap Walmart electronics section.

And just to make things even more hunky-dory, there were already people in there. We could feel Rucker tense up at the sight of the place. He hated crowded spaces, so why he was living in a big city confounded us, but we dealt with it. Why else would we tolerate giving him the front seat _every_ time?

"This the guy?" the boss asked shortly, pointing at the figure in the screen. He was relatively tall, with an average hue of brown hair that was escaping him, and—from what we could tell—a bit of a dominating nose. He was dressed in a sharp tux.

"I assume so," Hendrix replied. "He matches the description she gave me."

"So what's the story?" Dawes probed, leaning up against the far wall.

He sighed. "Dr. Herbert said Dr. Chase introduced him as Mr. Brown—not on the guest list." We shifted at that information: "sketchy" was written all over it, and then some. And even Dawes, who was not the fidgety one, stirred more than usual. "She said he seemed, well, _flustered_…said he tried to walk out with a copy of the Declaration."

Someone towards the front tapped a button on the control panel, and the screen zoomed in on Mr. Brown's face. "Paid with a Visa. Charge…to Benjamin Gates."

There was silence as we took in the news. We had a suspect—there should have been much rejoicing. But at the same time, this fellow was intimidating, a force to be reckoned with. How was this one guy able to do all this, to steal the unstealable? Though we liked cases (why else would we have signed up for the Bureau?) this one was threatening to be a doozy, and not the good type of doozy.

"Hold on," Dawes said quietly. "You said 'Dr. Chase,' right, Hendrix?" He nodded. "Dr. Herbert asked us earlier where she was, remember?"

"Oh yeah," Michaels added. "He said that she had been there until just then."

"Hey," Dawes called over to the other non-agents in the room. "Do you know Dr. Abigail Chase's position here?"

"She's the, uh…" one sighed. "Oh, what is it? I know it's important…"

"The Director of Document Conservation," the other supplied.

"Would she, by chance, have access to the preservation room?" the boss asked, breaking his silence. And much to our dread, they murmured their affirmations definitively. "Well…looks like we have a possible accomplice." Without another word, he rose to his feet and left, and we scrambled to keep up with him. Michaels and Rucker ran on ahead, but Dawes waited a moment for Hendrix.

"Nice work, rookie," she said with a fleeting grin, only to halfway shove him out the door so they didn't run the risk of irking the boss any more that was necessary. As we darted back to the police car, the boss talking hurriedly on his cell phone, we felt the sack of unemployment get shoved back into one of the boss' many file cabinets. Hopefully he wouldn't find it again for a while.

XXX

**Behind the scenes are fun. And that bit about Nicolas Cage's nose? I'm sorry, every time I look at him, I look at his nose. (shrugs)**

**OK: updates. I really hope that it won't be a couple months long again, but I'm not sure how long it will take. Sorry! (hides)**

**Review! It's fun! And now it's in a different location and no longer purple! (GASP) I can't tell you how much that threw me off. **


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